Dismantle the Sun
by canyouseemyspark
Summary: "i was happier then. or was that i? or am i now i? can't bring back time. like holding water in your hand. would you go back to then? just beginning then. would you?" - james joyce A modern AU about a chance meeting in a foreign country and everything that came afterwards.


"Are you sure about this?"

"Ashara, stop! You're making me nervous."

"It's just gonna look so… So – "

"Just do it!"

She feels a sharp pain through her nose and tears up against her will, but it dissipates quickly as soon as the tattoo artist puts a ball of cotton up to her piercing. He cleans it off and holds up a mirror for her to inspect it herself.

It's a little inflamed but she likes the look of it, a small hoop going through her septum, and even though Ashara looks at her disapprovingly all along for once Elia doesn't care.

She's going through her "rebellious phase" as Oberyn calls it, though he says it with a smirk. For Oberyn, rebelling meant disappearing and showing up at their mother's doorstep a year later with a little girl he called daughter. For Oberyn, rebelling wasn't so much a phase as a lifestyle. For Elia, rebelling was moving to Paris and getting as many things pierced, tattooed, and dyed as she could. For Elia, it was temporary, a way to cope with all of her friends back home getting engaged and married and leaving her behind. "I won't be a spectator to other people's lives," she'd told Oberyn, and she thinks he'd been proud of her despite how dramatic it sounds, but it was slowly dawning of her that no matter how far she ran away, maybe she couldn't escape from herself.

Ashara comes with her, fleeing from her own ghosts, and they share a beautiful apartment in the fifth arrondissement paid for by their parents, spending all day painting and reading and drinking after going to work at the Arabic language center for a few hours every morning. It's fun at first, being away from everything and everyone they know, but Elia wonders if her friend is starting to feel the same way she does, the fear that there'd never be a time when they would stop running, stop "rebelling."

They're both stifled, that much is true, and when they start snapping each other and trying to unload shifts at work onto other people, Ashara plans a trip to England for them for her brother's graduation. Elia gets her piercing on a whim in some small tattoo parlor outside the station in Paris, fingers it the whole time as they work it all out on the train, googling embarrassing things like "top 10 tourist locations in London" and "Harry Potter tour," and circling them on an oversized map of the city they'd picked up. From King's Cross they hop on another train to Cambridge, and Ashara has her phone out the whole time, clicking away and taking pictures of the sheep grazing the fields and the horses on the hills.

"I never knew England was so __rural__," She smiles, and it makes Elia smile too to see her friend happy.

An hour later though they stand outside the train station, huddled beneath an umbrella, the rain hammering over their heads and no matter how many times Ashara calls Arthur to pick them up, she gets sent right to voicemail.

"Maybe we should get a cab," Elia suggests, trying to keep the edge out of her voice.

Her friend doesn't try to do the same, "He'll come."

He doesn't come, but sends one of his friends instead, a young man, soaked from head to toe, with a crop of black hair anxiously checking his phone and looking up at them, probably to see if they matched whatever picture Arthur had sent of them.

"I'm Oswell," He offers gingerly, "Ashara and Elia?"

Ashara smiles politely, nodding; "Arthur's told me about you, it's nice to finally meet you."

"He's in lecture or else he would have come himself," Oswell explains, reaching for their bags, "He's told me to take you back to his place." Eying them warily, "It's a bit of a walk though."

Elia bites back the urge to say something and instead follows him, struggling to hold the umbrella as the winds pick up, her and Ashara looking quite the sight as they struggle to navigate the winding cobblestone streets, and by the time they reach Arthur's building half an hour later they're as wet as Oswell.

Once they're inside the lobby, he shakes his hair out like a dog.

"Quite the welcome to Cambridge you've had," He grins, dragging their sodden bags instead the elevator and pressing the button for the fourth floor.

When Ashara doesn't speak and the silence gets awkward, Elia offers a weak "yes" to hold them over until finally they're at the door, Oswell working the keys and ushering them into a warm apartment, mismatched rugs and furniture that made it all the cozier, smelling of coffee and soap. It's the "Dayne smell," Elia and Oberyn always teased Ashara, the smell which drifted through their villa in Algiers, the smell of a place that might have been home. Elia hadn't seen Arthur in years but it was precisely the kind of apartment she imagined him living, could picture him sitting at the desk by the window working on his sketches or out on the small terrace with a cigarette. He's happy here, she could see that plain enough, or else he wouldn't have bothered to make it so much his own.

Oswell stands awkwardly at the front door as though waiting for an invitation to stay, and at the thought of having to entertain him for a few more hours when her socks and underwear were soaked through, Elia can't help but give Ashara a lethal look.

"Thank you so much for everything, Oswell," Ashara murmurs, moving to hold onto the door as though she might close it in his face, and though he frowns, he finally leaves them to it.

The friends stand for a moment staring at each other, dripping onto the floor, and when Elia opens her mouth to complain, Ashara lifts up her hand in appeal.

"Don't even start!"

Notes: A companion piece to this although set in a different verse. I'm trying to develop my writing and work with new styles so this is going to be a bit of an experiment! New relationships and tags will be added later as the story develops (and chapters will definitely get longer).


End file.
